Ways and Means, or whoever was trying to kill her, had refused to take direct control of her constructs. Maybe that would have been a weapon she could have used against it. Control could be traced. It could also be disrupted. Osia had the tools to jam radio signals.
So her assailant was relying on the constructs. It was disassembling its constructs’ minds with a virus or other some other slow corruption. A virus, too, carried information. It could be interrogated.
Osia remained in her cabin for days. Her scans had tracked the African coast slipping by. They were still one hundred and fifty kilometers from the southwest Iberian coast.
She felt the grinding of the rudders before she heard it. She knew her ship was changing course before her scans confirmed it.
Her pulse scan found Tass atop the aftcastle, steering. She was alone. The other constructs might not have realized what she was doing.
Osia pulled her door block loose, and climbed to the deck.
Her constructs did not have tear ducts. That was one of the few ways they departed from the human standard model. But the skin below Tass’s eyes was realistically puffy and red.
She took a short, shocked breath when she saw Osia rising on the aftcastle steps.
Osia said, “We haven’t reached the Mediterranean yet.”
Tass caught herself in the middle of a step back. “You’re not going to get there,” she said.
In the serial, Tass had been an engineer stereotype: mousy, uninvolved, antisocial, and of extreme political views. She was not the first of her constructs that Osia would have expected to do this. But when Tass set her mind on a course of action, no matter how radical, it was impossible to shake her free from it.
Tass had not been taking care of herself. Her hairy was greasy and tangled, her arms filthy. Osia stepped around Tass, not getting close to her. Osia asked, “Why don’t you want me to reach land?”
“You were working with Ira,” she said. “We figured it out. You betrayed us to the partisans. You both did. You attacked each other because you wanted to out each other first, put the blame on them.”
Osia took a step toward the steering wheel. She said, “The only way I can stop this is by going where I asked you to.”
Tass held her ground. “I won’t let you get away with fucking us over.”
Osia reached for the wheel. The knife was in Tass’s hand so suddenly that Osia hardly had time to register it. Tass had moved with superhuman speed. She was not supposed to be able to do that. But she did not attack.
Osia held up her hands, took a step back.
She asked, “What would I possibly have to gain from working with the partisans?”
“I don’t know.” Tass’s voice quavered. “I don’t want to find out.”
Osia kept her eyes on the knife. With her legs numb and lagging, if Tass lunged, Osia didn’t know if she could dodge in time. She had not charted her constructs’ new capabilities. Tass said, “I just want you gone.”
Rather than give Tass the time to think and act on that pronouncement, Osia played along, asked, “So why would the partisans want me to reach Europe?”
Tass’s brow furrowed. “Reach where?”
The virus was robbing her of her memory. “The next landmass. Our destination.”
“So that your partisan friends can find you. And you can leave us behind.”
“Is that what you’re afraid of? Being abandoned?”
“Why should I be afraid of something we’ve all lived with for thirty years? You’re hardly ever here. No, I’m not afraid you’ll abandon us. I’m afraid you’ll kill us.”
Again – the contradiction. Just as with Straton. Ira, too, probably. Tass believed the Sarrathi partisans were real, and didn’t remember what Europe was. But she knew she was artificial. The virus was ripping her mind apart. Left on its own, it would kill her.
It was astounding how much this hurt. Only at the end of their decades together was she beginning to figure out how much these constructs had meant.
Osia said, “I need to get to shore. I’m going to find help. For all of us.”
Tass’s knife hand tensed.
Osia did not intend to learn more about her constructs’ capabilities the hard way. She moved first.
Her hand snapped forward. She seized Tass’s wrist, yanked forward to knock her off balance. Tass stumbled, reeled. She fell backward into Osia.
Osia’s grip was crushing. It should have jarred the knife loose, would have crushed an ordinary human’s bones. Tass held on. And Osia held onto her. She spun Tass around, and pinned Tass’s knife hand against her side. She wrapped her free arm around Tass’s neck, holding her tight.
The scuffle had been louder than Osia had hoped. The deck boards reverberated with footfalls. Osia spun in time to see Coral and Straton climbing the steps.
Osia saw the idea forming in Tass’s eyes. In the serial, little had been more important to Tass than getting her crewmates to believe the same things she did.
She did not always go about that honestly.
Tass cried, “She confessed to it! She’s with the partisans!”
Osia could read the shock in Coral’s eyes, the hurt. Until now, Coral was the only one among them that Osia would have admitted feeling anything about. Seeing thir open, speechless mouth now felt like an icicle plunged into the back of her head.
Tass said, “She’s going to leave us all behind. She’s going to send the partisans to kill us.”
Coral looked to Tass, eyes wide.
Tass shouldn’t have been able to raise her trapped hand.
The virus must have found some way to tweak Tass’s muscles, rewrite her capabilities. She raised the knife, drove it toward Osia’s thigh.
Osia had kept her grip on Tass’s hand. She deflected the knife the only way that their stances allowed – into Tass’s side, and ripping up toward her ribs.
Unlike Ira, Tass died quickly. All of the constructs’ bodies were programmed to recognize when power flow to vital sections was no longer sustainable, and switch off. Tass twitched once. When Osia released her, she fell limp to the deck.
Straton’s roar broke her shock.
Straton stood on the top step. He, too, was carrying a rigging knife. They must all have decided to arm themselves after Ira’s death.
There was no time to explain, and no point trying to. Osia’s sense of time dilated as her combat programs adjusted to the new circumstances. She took a pulse scan of Tass’s body, as detailed as the time allowed. An astonishing heat had built up under Tass’s arms. A byproduct of the way the virus had changed her, maybe. Some of her muscles had overheated and burned. But there were also tiny, bright specks of fire in her chest and her stomach, where her memory cells were.
The virus was protecting itself. Burning out her constructs’ memory cells the instant they died. That meant she had to get one of them.
Straton charged. Coral blocked the stairs down. Thi looked to Tass, and back to Osia.
Osia stepped to the aftcastle’s railing. Coral opened thir mouth to say something, but Osia had already mounted the railing. She jumped to the deck below. Her incomplete control of her legs staggered her, but she kept going.
Pulse scans told her where her constructs were at all times. The problem was that they had scanners of their own. Every time she pulse scanned, they sensed it, triangulated her position. She had to be gone before they got there.
For the rest of the chase, it was her eyes and ears against theirs.
Hers were better.
She opened the door to below decks, and then ducked behind the aftcastle. After she saw Braeloris go down the steps, she turned to the deck railing.
She’d hitched one leg over when a rigging knife kissed her neck. It whipped past her, fell into the sea. It had been a powerful throw. Osia turned. Straton was there, his arm still raised.
No doubt left. Ira’s attack hadn’t been a fluke. He had meant to kill her. So did Straton.
She pushed over the railin
g, plunged into the water.
With her legs half-numb, she felt like she was swimming with someone else’s body. She swam alongside the boat, toward the prow. By the time she surfaced, she could hear Straton and Coral arguing. On the serial, Coral had been the team’s diver. He wanted to send thir in after Osia. Coral, correctly, pointed out, “She has all the advantages down there.”
Nevertheless, a minute later, Osia heard a small splash off the other side of the boat.
Osia pushed underneath the waves, sank below the hull. Her constructs could have found her if Ways and Means had fed them information from its satellites. She kept her sensors open, but never overheard a call.
She could have swum to land. She had the strength. But her body was designed for the energy expenditures of freefall, not swimming in full gravity. She would have arrived on the mainland drained and half-dead. She would have had to spend time recharging, been easy prey for another ambush. With the smoke she’d smelled along the way, she half-suspected Ways and Means had assets on shore.
Even without those problems, she would have stayed. These were her crew. No matter how muddled they had become, they could still tell her what was happening to them. The fact that her enemy had gone out of its way to destroy their memory cells suggested they were her best lead.
Coral was a good diver. There were even fewer places to hide below the ship than on deck. Even with a need to breathe, thi would find a way to force a confrontation before long. Osia wanted least to kill Coral, of all her constructs. She pulse scanned to give away her location, then swam aft. She clung to the thin slats between hull boards, and climbed aboard.
She hid behind the door below decks. She couldn’t keep doing this, chasing them. She was putting off what she had to do next.
Night turned both the sea and the sky black. The ship and its torches drifted in a vacuum. Finally, when she was ready, she picked the one of them she liked least. Braeloris. She crouched near the mainmast and waited for Braeloris. She did not seem at all surprised when Osia stepped from behind it.
Braeloris said, “You never made any noise. Not even when Ira stabbed you. You told us you were human once, but it must have been a long time ago.”
Osia said, “You’re being manipulated by a virus. It’s using your own feelings to convince you to do what it wants. Using them as rationalizations.” She didn’t know why she was trying. She did not have the tools to save them.
Braeloris said, “Coral and Straton saw you kill Tass. You said nothing. You always wanted us to think that you don’t feel anything. Now I actually believe it.”
“I’m feeling quite a bit right now,” Osia said.
When Braeloris stepped forward, took a swing, Osia was ready. Even with Braeloris’s better-than-human speed, Osia could be faster, now that she knew what to look for. She stepped aside, deflected Braeloris with her forearm.
She wasn’t ready for the hands that grabbed her shoulders. Straton. He gripped her far stronger than a human could have. Surprise jolted her. She had been sure nobody was behind her.
Nobody. She had been monitoring for signs of a human: the infrared fog of their breath, the heat of their skin, the whisper of their motion. Somehow Straton had overridden his body, stopped simulating the things that made him appear human.
She’d made a mistake. She hadn’t been playing with them, making them chase her around. They’d been playing with her. Straton’s skin was cool as the wind.
“Not even now,” Braeloris asked. “Not a single noise. Always a performance. You want us to know how much better you think you are than us.”
Osia’s combat programs presented her with a dozen good options for getting out of this. She held off. It wasn’t because she believed Braeloris. These people had been her only companions for thirty years. They had become so much a part of her that hearing their voices was as natural as hearing her own.
With Ira, there had just been the flash of the attack, the rage and the wound. There had been no time to think. This was different. What was worse – it was their voices saying this. They were not being puppeted. Just turned against her. A hot, deep, quaking revulsion nearly made her grip falter. She could not stand hearing them speak like this.
Ways and Means had not stopped at trying to destroy her body. It did not seem to mind attacking her spirit as well. It must have been intentional.
She had to be better than it thought she was.
“I surrender,” Osia said.
Braeloris blinked. For a moment, she seemed not to have understood.
Osia asked them, “What do you want me to do for you?”
Osia no longer needed to hide her pulse scans. They revealed Coral climbing up the prow. Thi’d been searching underwater, but thi was on thir way.
Osia prompted, “You two aren’t trying to kill me. Therefore – you want something.”
The virus was still clashing against their personalities. The crew of the Whiptail had been good people, mostly. They didn’t kill prisoners. They didn’t want to kill her when she had surrendered. Yet. There was still a chance to get information.
Straton said, “We want you to admit it. Tell us why you and Ira did it.”
“Fine. What then? Turn me in?” When they didn’t answer, she asked, “What authority would take me?”
Braeloris looked to Straton. Coral was out of the water, nearly here.
Osia said, “It wouldn’t be the Unity.” In the serial, this crew had been cut off from friendly support. “The only power you could contact was the Sarrathi partisans.”
In a slim minority of endings for the serial, about ten percent, Braeloris had defected to the partisans too. Among other possible endings to that thread, the most common was that they had offered her a home, a pardon, a trip home at the end of the war.
In the soup the virus had made of their minds, Braeloris might have become convinced she was working against and for the partisans at the same time. The truth might rise to the top. Osia pressed, “Where would you take me? Who are you working for?”
Braeloris’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Lip-reading revealed nothing coherent. But she was trying to speak.
“Where is your ally based?” Osia asked. “Are they ashore?” Her eyes flicked to the stars, to the path Ways and Means had taken. “Are they in the sky?”
Braeloris raised her hand. It trembled. She couldn’t seem to raise it higher than her forearm, but she was trying.
“If you can’t answer, point.”
“Don’t let her trick you,” Straton interrupted. His grip tightened around her neck. The muscles in his free arm tensed.
Osia was out of time. She couldn’t let him do anything else he had made up his mind to do. Her combat programs took over. She lifted her leg, stomped.
Straton staggered backward, his ankle broken. The pain he exhibited seemed real enough. He fell to the deck, yelling.
That was enough to break Braeloris out of her spell. Osia allowed Braeloris to strike her. It was a good, bone-breaking punch, and would have done damage to a normal person. Osia rolled her head. Her head craned farther than a human skeleton would have allowed. She briefly separated her vertebrae, turned her neck liquid, softening the blow.
Osia’s counterpunch fractured Braeloris’s skull plating.
Coral stepped past a knot of sailing lines in time to see Braeloris crack her head on the mast, go limp.
Osia remounted her neck. Infrared picked up white-hot sparks of heat all over Braeloris’s body. Braeloris’s memory cells, burning out like Tass and Ira’s.
By the time Coral’s eyes found her, Osia was already crouched over Straton, her knee on Straton’s throat, compressing his airway.
In the serial, some good percentage of the time, Coral and Straton had become lovers. Osia did not believe that had ever happened on this ship. Yet Coral’s breath caught.
Straton could not quite mask his pain, but he was coherent enough to hold his hands to the deck, palms flat.
Play-acting the villa
in was the only way Coral was going to believe anything she said now. Now that thi had seen Osia kill two of thir shipmates.
Osia said, “Help me reach the mainland, or I’ll kill him.”
Coral’s gaze traveled to Braeloris and back to Straton. Thi had not said a word. Osia had not given thir time. Thi nodded.
Osia said, “We still have one hundred fifty kilometers to go, and you’re going to have to work the sails alone. Get to the outhauls.”
“And after that?” Coral asked, as businesslike as if Osia had been discussing their bearing. “What happens to us?”
Her constructs were degrading by the hour, spoiling more and more for a confrontation. Osia doubted the virus was going to allow any of her constructs to survive. How long Coral and Straton lasted was only a matter of Osia’s discretion, and her skill at steering them all away from the fight the virus wanted.
She needed to get to one of her constructs’ memory cells while they were still alive. And she needed to get as close to European shores as she could manage.
Straton started to shift. She felt his tensing muscles before she ever saw any movement. She put more weight on his throat. He stopped.
She could not manage forever, but she could manage for right now.
Osia told Coral, “Then I’ll release Straton, and we can all go our own ways.”
15
The Sienese lifted their portcullis only when the Company of the Star had backed a quarter-mile away. The iron screeched and ground from weeks of disuse and settling. It halted halfway, jammed.
It made Fia smile to think that the company might have warped the gates, though they had never attacked the gate directly.
The Sienese delegation could have fit underneath, but that would have been insufferable to their dignity. And none of them were likely to risk the spiked bars crashing back down upon them. After half a minute of unstifled laughter from the company, the gate resumed rising, and the moment of levity vanished.
Crossbowmen lined the city’s walls. Fia’s stood behind her, with more horsemen waiting. For the first time in the weeks of the siege, she got a glimpse of the city through the gates: an open square bracketed by the city barracks. The one street she saw was empty but for soldiers and filth. There were no carts or stalls or men or women or children out at all.
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